


After The End Of It All

by oratorio



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 12:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9071578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oratorio/pseuds/oratorio
Summary: She has always been tough.  Always been strong and passionate, and *alive*.  Then she saves the world, and suddenly she feels like she is none of those things any more.Yet he stays by her side, every single day.  No matter how many times she tries to send him away.This is a gift fic for the Mass Effect Fanfiction Writers Secret Santa 2016, for Soldiermom1973.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soldiermom1973](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldiermom1973/gifts).



> This is the first time I have ever written a gift fic, it's been a real challenge as for the first time I am not writing just for me and I am having to think hard about what someone else might like. I so hope that this is not too angsty!

Countless times, I tell him to go away.

I do it in many ways. Sometimes my voice is dull and resigned, on those days when I’m too tired to care. Sometimes it’s in silence, the rigidity of my body and expressionless face speaking for me. Most often, though, I rage and scream - bitter curses spilling from my mouth like bullets aimed at his heart.

Today, I’ve gone too far. Even I realise this, as I watch him kneeling, covered in milk, picking up the shattered pieces of my favourite mug from the floor.

He sucks at a cut on his finger and slowly rises to his feet, gazing at me with pain in his hazel eyes.

“I don’t know how to help you,” he says, his voice soft. Then he turns away quickly, as if he can’t bear to look at me a moment longer.

I know how that feels.

As the door clicks shut behind him, I think of all the words I want to say to him.

_I don’t want your help._

_I don’t deserve your help._

_I never asked for you to be here._

_I want to die._

_It’d be easier for us both if I did._

**_I love you_.**

I sigh. I’ve always loved Kaidan. I think I knew as soon as I laid eyes on him, standing to attention, everything about him always neat as a new pin. He was everything I wasn’t - kind, even-tempered, empathetic. He genuinely found something to like about everyone he met, even the spiky pilot who seemed to spend half his life boasting and the other half trying to wind people up. He had a good heart, and he had chosen to share it with me.

I had been the luckiest woman in the universe. It couldn’t last, I’d always known that. When he went down wounded on that day of days, months ago now, my throat had closed in fear. I’d never known panic like it. Me, the hardened old soldier who had seen many fall, almost in tears over that man. The relief when he had staggered to his feet was indescribable. I knew, even as I helped him into the Normandy to evacuate, that I would probably never see him again. I knew I was going to my death, but at least he might live. That was enough to sustain me.

Only, I hadn’t died. I had come as close to death as any human being ever could, and still drawn breath. Only my Cerberus upgrades had saved me. Again. Lucky, people had said. Over and over again. The luckiest woman in the universe.

They wouldn’t have said any of that if they had seen me.

As it was, the pictures on the screens showed me running into the beams, muscles flexing, legs strong and hale, my gun drawn. I was powerful, terrifying. A match for any enemy. A goddamn universe-saving hero.

The reality? Four months unconscious in a hospital bed, wasting away, the world around me putting itself back together much faster than my body could. I opened my eyes to a world that I didn’t even recognise. A body I didn’t recognise.

Now, I can’t even wipe my own arse. Hilarious, right?

Kaidan was there, of course, the evening I woke up. Hasn’t ever left my side since. I ask him why he bothers, why he would waste his time and his hearty years helping me on to the toilet and lifting me in and out of bed. He just tells me he loves me. As if it were as simple as those three words.

I know he wants a family. I know I can’t ever give him that.

I try every day to make him leave me.

One thing we do have in common, my Kaidan and I. We’re both stubborn. No matter how I hurt him, with my silence and my words, he remains. He endures. I know it pains him, how I am. I can see it in his eyes when he pulls my socks up my withered legs, when he runs his soapy hands over my scarred and puckered skin. I can see the memories in his eyes like a movie of the past, all those nights when his hands on my body meant something other than help. I hate those memories. I hate that he reminds me of how whole I used to be.

I cough, raspy and dry, and I wish again that I hadn’t thrown the mug at him. If only because I am suddenly desperate for a drink.

“Kaidan,” I croak, trying to raise my pathetic voice loud enough to bring him running from the kitchen. It sounds as if I have shards of glass in my throat, cracked and broken. I try again, but the sound is even weaker.

I grit my teeth and wheel my chair over to the doorway. Five metres, perhaps. Even this takes effort, my arms like sticks of jelly. Kaidan had tried to persuade me to use the electric chair instead of this old-fashioned contraption. “It’ll be easier for you to get around,” he’d said. And that was true, but my limbs were already scrawny and perished. I wanted to be strong again, no matter what it took, and no electric chair would give me that.

Stubborn, you see.

I stop to catch my breath as I reach the door and tug it open, only to have it stolen from me again as I look up and along the hallway.

Kaidan is in the kitchen, the palms of his hands flat against the countertop, his whole body folded over so that his head almost touches the surface. His shoulders are shaking with the effort of keeping his tears silent.

I don’t know how long I sit there watching him. It was probably only seconds, although it feels like hours passed before I slide my chair backwards and close the door with a soft click.

I had never seen my Kaidan cry. All that we had been through, all the pain and terror of the war, watching me run from him into what seemed like certain death, through the fear of sitting by my hospital bed not knowing whether I would heal, the loss of good friends and companions: through all of it he had been a rock. Steady, serious, calm. He had always been what everyone else needed.

I feel bile rise in my throat as I think about how nobody had ever really considered what he needed. About all the times I had treated him like shit, because I couldn’t cope with my own life. I had never once given a thought to his.

It’s too much. I heave my chair over to the window and sit looking out at the world below it. The street is clear now, no sign of the craters and bullet holes which covered every surface after the war. Everything looks clean and new, and bright. I watch people stroll along, hand-in-hand, as if they have no care in the world. This is what we did, I think. We made this life possible, even if it meant we sacrificed our own.

I think back to another conversation I had had with Kaidan.

“You speak as though you’re dead, Shepard,” he had spat, his voice desperate and worn.

“I wish I was,” I had replied, ignoring the way his face crumpled as if I had hit him. “This is not living. What sort of hero am I, all broken and twisted, can’t even tie a shoelace? I can hear those people now: look, there goes that Commander Shepard, I heard she saved the world, can you imagine? Doesn’t look like she could save a fucking snail from being stepped on.”

Kaidan had sighed and crouched at my feet, forcing me to look at him.

“You are, and will always be, the greatest hero that anyone could ever meet,” he had said, his proud words at odds with his grey and downcast face. “You will always be the greatest person that I have ever known. I love you so much, and I cannot say how glad I am that you are still here with me. Please never forget that. Losing you again would have broken me.”

I make a bitter noise in my throat. I might still be here, in this apartment, but he’d lost me anyway.

I hear Kaidan come back into the room behind me, and I turn my chair. His cheeks are pink, but there is no other sign that he had been crying. His lips are forced into a smile, and he holds a glass of water in his hands.

“I brought you this, Shepard. Thought you sounded like you had a bit of a sore throat. Anything else I can get you?”

I smile and take it from him. “You’re right. Thank you. Though whisky might have been more effective.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You know whisky doesn’t go well with your painkillers.”

I sigh and slump in my chair. “I don’t give a fuck about that, as you well know.”

And we’re back there again. Back in that old, tired routine of him being overly attentive and me hurting him. It’s almost as reliable as he is, these days. The one thing I am still good at.

“Why do you do it?” I ask, my voice uncharacteristically quiet.

Kaidan rubs a hand across his eyes. “Why do I do what?”

“Why do you put up with this shit? I’m such a total bitch to you, and you just suck it up. Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“That’s not - not good enough.” I’m almost shouting now, frustration making me stumble over my words. “I’m awful. I’m no good to anyone. All I do is make people feel like shit. You should go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Kaidan kneels down beside me and tries to take my hands in his own. I pull back.

“How long is that going to last?” I ask, feeling my throat tighten. “How many times do I have to tell you to leave me before you just fucking do as you’re told?”

“You’re not my commander any more, Jane,” he says. “I don’t have to listen to your orders.”

I laugh bitterly. “Don’t I know it.”

He shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, and carries on. “But you’re still the woman I love,” he says. “You’re still you. You’re still the most stubborn, difficult, pain in the ass, amazing person that you’ve always been. And I love you with everything I have. I’m not leaving. Deal with it.”

I close my eyes. “The woman you love died in the Citadel,” I say. “You should bury her and go on.”

“No.”

One tiny word, two letters long. It carried the weight of all his emotions in the half-second it took him to say it. I knew he meant it. I also knew I didn’t deserve it.

“You’ve suffered enough because of me,” I say, my voice weak and resigned now.

I hear Kaidan inhale a deep breath. His eyes look wet.

“We’ve all suffered, my love,” he says, his voice soft and frail. “All of us, none more than you. But you are not the cause of any of this. You are the reason we’re still going on. Never, ever blame yourself for any of this, let alone the way you feel. None of this is your fault.”

For the first time, I feel tears begin to shimmer in my eyes, one solitary drop swelling and falling down my cheek. Kaidan reaches out a finger to wipe it away.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to him brokenly.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, hey.”

Then he’s leaning over me as I bury my head in his shoulder, my tears creating dark patches on the blue of his shirt. He holds me close to him until my sobs taper into little hiccuping snuffles, my eyes feeling puffy and twice their usual size. I cannot remember the last time I cried, let alone in front of someone.

“I made a mess of your shirt,” I say, my voice muffled against his chest.

“Needed a wash anyway,” he says.

“I can tell,” I say, sniffing loudly and dramatically. I feel a grin creep across my features, an expression almost as alien as the tears.

“Huh - wha?” Kaidan says, pulling back and looking into my eyes. “You!”

I stretch my hand up and ruffle his hair.

“I need a rest, Kaidan,” I say. “Can you take me to bed, please?”

He dutifully - of course - lifts me easily from my chair and takes me through to my bedroom. Of course, I weigh almost a third less than I used to these days, but he never had trouble carrying me. I always felt light as a feather in his arms.

When he lays me down and pulls the soft blanket over me, when he leans over to press his dry lips to my forehead, I pull him down beside me and ask him to stay. I want to feel his warmth beside me, feel his arms around me in ways that aren’t just functional.

We have a long way to go. But if I never take any other steps, at least I can take these.


End file.
